Terminating "Hello World" with extreme prejudice, was Re: Woolgathering on old -*art hobbies, was Re: TECH: 3D Printers == Santa Claus machines

From: Michael M. Butler (mmb@spies.com)
Date: Thu Jan 09 2003 - 22:53:16 MST


Emlyn O'regan wrote:
> MMB wrote:
> > I wish I had real data on the cultural impact of LEGO Mindstorms.
> >
> > Something like that approach, tied in with Desktop Santa,
> > could be verrrry cool for the
> > tiny fraction of kids who get one and really dig in. But LEGO
> > Mindstorms seems to have
> > sunk without a trace, apart from some MIT Media Lab and
> > thesis work. Pity.
>
> Isn't it still alive? Last I saw it was still in stores. I really want
> to get my hands on it; anyone got a 2nd hand kit for cheap?

Well, I'm not sure, but Fry's and eBay seemed not to have much action
the last time I checked. Perhaps I am making a shawl from an old sock,
as the Polish proverb has it.

I hae a set I bought on eBay that I've only inspected since I got it.
No, it's not for sale. Yet. :)

> > Re: what's considered coo:, in software, the Squeak folks are
> > trying with might and main
> > to put a stake in the heart of "Hello World." That's a _good_
> > thing.
>
> What does this mean? I'm intrigued.

Well, "coo;" is what "cool" looks like when you type badly.

Oh, you meant the other part? Let me see here. There are lots of
"Hello World" Squeak links, but then there's

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~mark.guzdial/mm-csed-v2.pdf

Mark Guzdial seems to be a cool guy. Here's a little bit from his
"projects" page (don't have the URL, I'm cutting & pasting from a copy
on my hard drive, but I'm sure a little mangle-snooping around the above URL
wll turn it up). He is the source of my comment, due to this pull-quote,
also found in the larger excerpt below:

"We have an agenda these days in computer science education.
We'd like to see "Hello,World!" go away as a first programming activity,
in favor of more creative multimedia activities."

<<

Teaching Everyone through/about Dynabooks

The general ideas of Dynabooks certainly extend beyond Squeak, but
it's not nearly as easy to do multimedia on other platforms.

But I think it's well worth while doing it! There is ample evidence
that Computer Science classes tend to filter out women and other
minorities, rather than include them. Part of the issue is that early
CS classes tend to be rather boring. Yet, programs that make music or
do graphical transitions or combine media are no more complex and work
just as well for examples and homework as the searches, sorts, and data
structure assignments that typically fill CS1 and CS2.

Programming Media in Squeak: We have an agenda these days in computer
science education. We'd like to see "Hello,World!" go away as a first
programming activity, in favor of more creative multimedia activities.

(See editorial.) We've been exploring music, but we'd like to build
some Squeak-based simple activities in:

Digital video effects: Compositing, changing colors in video, etc.
     (Lushi is doing these now)
Graphics: Blurring, morphing, etc.
Sound: Chorus, reverb, etc.

Any interest in trying to build small examples in these media to be
used in developing CS1/CS2 assignments?

Extending to our CS1/CS2 classes. I would like to see programs, for
both DrScheme and Java, to:

To fill a sound buffer with the samples to generate a tone (e.g., 440
hz) for two seconds. Once we can do that, we can do just about anything.
(See examples at http://swiki.cc.gatech.edu:8080/compMusic/ActiveEssays).
To create a blurring transition between two images. Create a mapping between
pixels in the source and target images, then for each step (say, 10 steps),
do a linear transition of color values from the source to the target.
This is a big step toward interesting animations.

>>



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